Internationally acclaimed media critic, author and filmmaker Jean Kilbourne presented a lecture Wednesday at Sacramento State calling for change in how women and men are portrayed in advertising.

“The Naked Truth” focused on how the advertising industry is not selling products to consumers, but rather values – through images and concepts of success and worth, love, sexuality, popularity and normalcy.

Many of the images Kilbourne spoke about showed women in print media depicted as perfect and ideal. She said these messages of perfection trickle down to adolescent girls. When women, and especially young girls, see images of ideal beauty in print, they try to live up to those expectations. When they cannot, women feel they have failed at being beautiful.

Kilbourne said even clothing with logos creates an atmosphere of status and entitlement. Because of this, Kilbourne convinced a group of mothers at her daughter’s junior high school not to buy clothing with logos for their children.

Rebecca Aeschliman, a senior sociology major who attended the lecture, said she now understands the control advertising had on her early in life. She made the conscious decision to refrain from messages targeted at her.

“I have changed the way I interact with media through the television shows I watch, the products I buy and I have stopped going to the mall. I did not realize it until Kilbourne said it, but I do not even wear anything with a logo on it,” Aeschliman said.

She said her original attempt to live up to the media’s expectations of beauty in women was unsuccessful.

“I failed and gave up on attaining the beauty from the magazines. I had to come to the realization that I was not going to meet that standard. The challenge then became finding the worth in myself again,” Aeschliman said.

Sarah Casna-Arroyo, a sophomore pre-nursing major, said the misleading cues from advertising took a toll on her early on in adolescence.

“I personally went through depression when I was younger, along with other issues that had gone on in my life when I was a child. These issues affected my personal image of myself,” Casna-Arroyo said. “It is horrible that advertising has these multiple mixed messages that are confusing to understand for any person looking at them. It affects your self-esteem extremely.”

Kilbourne called the current advertising climate a “toxic cultural environment” and said it needs to be fixed.

“Everyone must work together to change the climate we live in. We cannot do it alone and we cannot do it child by child,” Kilbourne said. “Even though I educated my daughter to be media savvy, she still suffered from low self-esteem. It was heartbreaking to see this. And so as parents, we need to educate our children on the affects of media.”

She said it is extremely important for the general public to realize how much media impacts what people buy.

“Most people feel that they are not influenced by advertising,” Kilbourne said. “We do not consciously pay attention to it, but that does not mean we are not influenced by it.”

Kilbourne said advertising controls people’s decisions on a subconscious level, but after hearing her lecture, people become aware of the power of advertising.

“When people see my presentation for the first time, they say to me afterwards that they will never look at ads in the same way,” Kilbourne said.

Matt Harrington can be reached at [email protected]